Fridays Are the New Mondays
Lately, ‘Thank god it’s Friday’ has become more like ‘Holy sh*t, it’s Friday’
It’s 7:15 p.m. on a Friday, and I’m Slacking my co-workers at Medium.
One is editing a story. One is doing… I’m not sure what, but tapping away furiously on his keyboard. I’m trying to finish writing this story. In our Slack chat, we all agree it is too late and a little too dark to still be at the office. But we’re only just wrapping up our to-do lists.
When did our last day of the work week go from TGIF to a frantic race against the clock? Why do Fridays suddenly feel like Mondays?
Friday’s lack of chill has a lot to do with the new pace of an “always on” workplace and its effects on time management, says Rebecca Fraser-Thill, a career coach.
“We’re so used to getting information streamed at us all the time, we expect or think that we should have the same in the workplace, too,” she says of our never-ending, meeting-heavy, Slack-happy, I’ll-follow-up-with-an-email culture. There’s a “fear of missing out,” even at work — if you’re not in that meeting or on that email thread, you might worry that your work is going unnoticed or you’re being sidelined. So you pile your day with more meetings, which leaves little time for quality, productive, invigorating work.
